By Marlon Villa
With an enthusiastic home crowd waving the home flag throughout the game and a solid team defense, Long Beach State obtained a 2-1 victory against their rival, Cal State Fullerton.
The result puts The Beach on top of the conference standings, and makes it their second consecutive win, as last week they had a 3-0 clean sheet against CSU Bakersfield.
At 10:38 min into the game, CSULB’s Sophia Jones opened the scoreboard with a clever team play and assists from Lena Silano and Aimee Medwin.
The scoring didn’t end there, when in minute 33:11, Long Beach was granted a penalty kick and Silano scored the goal.
CSULB's Lena Silano opening up the score board with a penalty kick during the first half. Photo credit: Marlon Villa
Cal state Fullerton had a strong start with two attempts to goal in the first half. However, The Beach’s defense stood their ground and defended their goal posts.
As a rivalry game, there are clashes to be expected and this was no exception, with Fullerton having 19 total fouls and CSULB having a total 10 throughout the game.
In the course of the game there were several yellow cards granted with two of them being for Long Beach players Solano and Elysia Laramie and two for Fullerton players Hailey Gough and Kaya Hawkinson.
Silano contributed with both goals and assists in the match and is very proud of the team in preparation for their next away game.
“Just excited, now we have to take care of business in Hawaii,” Silano said. “We’re just taking it moment by moment and just taking care of the games and getting all of the points we can.”
In the second half, The Beach attempted to go for more goals, with 13 shots moving towards the goal and six shots at the goal.
The CSULB women's soccer team celebrating the first goal made by Lena Silano Photo credit: Marlon Villa
Towards the last leg of the match, Fullerton attempted a comeback when their player Emelia Owen scored a goal after they were conceded with a penalty kick in minute 72:46.
“It’s unfortunate that we made a couple mistakes early in the first half to give up two goals that we don’t typically give up,” Fullerton’s head coach, Demian Brown said. “We had 11 corner kicks we probably could’ve put one of those in, we created a number of opportunities to the run of play that in the last moments we weren’t good enough.”
Long Beach State women’s soccer head coach Mauricio Ingrassia felt his team had a tremendous performance, were excellent offensively, but thinks the team still has a few things to work on.
“I thought defensively we did what we needed to do and I wish we would’ve gotten that third goal and wouldn’t have been so ‘nervy’ in the end,” Ingrassia said. “We could have been a little more composed today but obviously it’s a rivalry game, so there was a lot on the line.”
The Beach heads across the Pacific Ocean for their next game, where they will go against the University of Hawai’i at Manoa on Oct. 2.
